Everything Makes More Sense When You Look Backwards
Isaac Harvey MBE was born and raised in East London, with a disability called limb/pelvic hypo/aplasia, which means no arms and short legs. He has never allowed his condition to be a barrier to his ambitions, his drive and his determination to succeed.
Isaac was honoured with an MBE, awarded by King Charles himself, for his services and advocacy to those within the disability community. He has also modelled an official London Fashion Week catwalk which led to his being featured in Vogue, sharing the importance of adaptive clothing. He was a torch bearer in the 2012 Olympics, featured in Forbes magazine and has built a following of over 40,000 people on LinkedIn, sharing his insights with a global audience as an international speaker.
"Purpose was always something I thought I'd recognise when I found it. A clear sign, a feeling of certainty, something that just felt right and stayed that way. I'm not sure that moment is actually coming, and I think that might be okay.
Before any of the advocacy, the speaking, the MBE, the Forbes feature or being showcased in Vogue, there was really just one thing I wanted. To be creative. Doing A-level Media genuinely changed something in me and not in a small way. It was the first time I had found something where disability didn't really get in the way. Once I was at a computer, I was in my own world. Whatever was in my head, I could put on a screen. Every video I made was an improvement on the last, and that feeling of progress was addictive in the best possible way. Creativity felt like it had no limits, and for someone who spent a lot of time navigating a world full of them, that mattered more than I probably realised at the time.
I made videos of everything. Skiing, skydiving, tallship sailing. I filmed all of it as if it was completely ordinary, because to me it was. The disability was visible on screen but I never spoke about it, never made it part of the story. I was just a person doing things whilst being creative and that was enough for me.
Friends and family kept telling me during all of this that I should talk about my own life more openly when it comes to living with a disability. That I might change someone's perspective or encourage someone to try the things I was doing. I'd hear very often but I would always say to myself, why? Talking about disability didn't feel creative to me, and I couldn't really see why I'd want to spend my energy on it. So, I intentionally ignored it and carried on.
Then YouTube started to become a real thing, and something shifted in how I thought about all of it. I randomly entered a competition and it opened a door in my mind that I hadn't been expecting. Suddenly it wasn't just about making things I was proud of. I wanted to be a YouTuber. A proper one. I looked at the people in that world and I wanted what they had, the fast cars, the millions of subscribers, the lifestyle, living in a mansion. I had no clear idea how that would actually work having a disability, but I saw others doing it and I genuinely believed that was the direction I wanted to be heading into.
Then I won the competition where I thought that was the moment everything was about to change. I was invited onto television. I was in newspapers. I was given a YouTube manager who was supposed to help me grow. On top of all of that I had £500 to spend on new equipment. I went to sleep that night convinced I was about to become the next big sensation.
Spoiler alert: it didn't happen like that.
The growth didn't come the way I'd imagined. The views weren't there, the engagement wasn't there and I started watching what other people were doing and comparing myself in a way that was really damaging. What had started as something genuinely fun, something that came from a real love of creating, slowly became something that felt heavy. The joy got lost somewhere in the gap between what I wanted and what was actually happening. And unfortunately, I lost motivation in a way I hadn't seen coming.
So, I stepped back from my own content and moved into freelance work instead, helping other people tell their stories and get their message out there. The creativity still had a place, it was just pointed in a different direction. Helping others find the right words or the right frame for something they cared about gave me a quiet sense of purpose. But as time went on there was a feeling underneath it all that something still wasn't quite right. Like I was close to something but hadn't fully found it yet.
Then I was invited to speak at an event in Birmingham. The brief was to talk about faith and share what life with a disability actually looks like, not just the adventure side of it but the full picture. The train access that isn't there. The detour you have to take because a lift is out. The reliance and planning on friends and family just to travel abroad. The way you build a genuinely full life around all of it anyway.
I did the talk and got a standing ovation, which I honestly wasn't expecting. But the moment that really stayed with me was a woman who came up afterwards. She told me she lived with pain in her legs and had spent a lot of time feeling like life was a struggle. Hearing my story had shifted something for her. And something shifted in me in that moment too, because I finally understood that sharing the real experience had a influence I had not really given much thought to. The thing my friends and family had been saying for years suddenly made sense.
So, I started weaving it into the videos and people responded in a way they hadn't before. The conversations that followed felt different, more meaningful than anything the earlier videos had sparked.
Then in 2021 I joined LinkedIn, which if I'm being honest wasn't something I was ever drawn to. It had always been described to me as the 'professional' Facebook. I never really understood why I'd want to be on a platform like that. It felt like a world that wasn't really meant for me. But then I started thinking about Wheels and Wheelchairs, an outdoor sports club that pairs wheelchair users and inline skaters for weekly skates and adventures abroad, and whether a more professional platform might help us find sponsors or get the right people to notice what we were doing. So, I joined with that in mind.
I started connecting with people across the disability community, discovered that July was Disability Pride Month, and honestly couldn't believe I'd never come across it before. I made a post about it and it went semi-viral. What started as a practical decision about sponsorship quietly became something much bigger, and LinkedIn has since become the most successful platform I've ever built on, not because of anything I strategically planned, but because I started sharing honestly and people responded to that.
I started connecting with people across the disability community, discovered that July was Disability Pride Month, and honestly couldn't believe I'd never come across it before. I made a post about it and it went semi-viral. What started as a practical decision about sponsorship quietly became something much bigger, and LinkedIn has since become the most successful platform I've ever built on, not because of anything I strategically planned, but because I started sharing honestly and people responded to that.
From there the pivot was real. What followed was a run of things I genuinely hadn't anticipated. Being part of London Fashion Week and featuring in Vogue. Travelling to Hong Kong as an international speaker. A piece in Forbes on workplace accessibility. An MBE from King Charles for advocacy within the disability community. A LinkedIn following that has grown to over 47,000 people.
So was that purpose?
I've sat with that question and I keep landing in the same place. I valued every part of it, and I still do. A lot of what I shared during that time genuinely seemed to give people something, whether that was a different perspective, a feeling that they weren't alone, or just a bit of fresh air in a space that can sometimes feel very heavy in moments of conflict or differences. But something shifted in 2026, and it made me think differently about what I actually want to build going forward.
Part of it came from realising that certain systems, particularly the ones that people with disabilities rely on most, are not built to work well for us and waiting for them to change on their own can take a very long time or in most cases impossible. I experienced that directly last year with my housing and care situation, and it was a turning point. It pushed me to think about how to create something more sustainable, something that keeps my own momentum going rather than being spent constantly pushing against things that aren't moving. I still want to advocate. I still want to contribute to change. But I want to do it in a way that I can actually sustain, and that feels credible and serious rather than driven by what performs best online.
What I'm drawn to now is being more behind the scenes, bringing other people's stories into the light, being more intentional about what I put out and why. And when I think about that alongside everything that came before, it feels like life is coming full circle in an interesting way. I started out wanting to be an influencer. Then I found more meaning in helping others as a freelancer. Then I stepped back into my own story in a big way. And now I'm gravitating back towards the creative, behind the scenes space again, but with everything I've learned alongside.
There is a clip of Steve Jobs talking about how you can only connect the dots in your life by looking backwards. You can't join them up when you're in the middle of things, you only see how it all fits together later. That has stuck with me after I saw this clip earlier this year, because it reflects something I've come to genuinely believe. Everything that has happened, the competition, the disappointment, the Birmingham talk, the semi-viral post, the MBE, even the difficult moments with the council last year, all of it has led somewhere. I didn't plan any particular step. I have just continued to proceed forward, stayed open and trusted that it was going somewhere even when I couldn't see where.
That is not about being careless with where you end up. Being intentional still matters. But sometimes the most important turns in life are the ones you didn't plan for, and you have to leave enough room to take them.
Will this next chapter give me purpose? Honestly, I don't know yet. But maybe that's fine. Maybe I'll look back at this piece in a few years and realise I've pivoted again in a direction I couldn't have predicted today. Or maybe this is the road that leads somewhere I've been heading all along without knowing it. Purpose might not be the destination at all. It might just be what you find when you look back at how far you've come.
I guess we'll find out."
