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accidents left his face a quilt of multicolored skin grafts, his hands
fingerless and his legs thin and motionless in a wheelchair.
The 16 surgeries Mitchell endured after the motorcycle accident burned
more than 65 percent of his body, left him unable to pick up a fork, dial
a telephone or go to the bathroom without help. But Mitchell, a former
Marine, never believed he was defeated. "I am in charge of my
own spaceship," he said. "It's my up, my down. I could choose to see
this situation as a setback or a starting point." Six months later he was
piloting a plane again.
Mitchell bought himself a Victorian home in Colorado, some real estate,
a plane and a bar. Later he teamed up with two friends and co-founded a
wood-burning stove company that grew to be Vermont's second largest
private employer.
Then four years after the motorcycle accident, the plane Mitchell was
piloting crashed back onto the runway during takeoff, crushing
Mitchell's 12 thoracic vertebra and permanently paralyzing him from
the waist down. "I wondered what the hell was happening to me. What
did I do to deserve this?"
Undaunted, Mitchell worked day and night to regain as much
independence as possible. He was elected Mayor of Crested Butte,
Colorado, to save the town from mineral mining that would ruin its
beauty and environment. Mitchell later ran for Congress, turning his odd
appearance into an asset with slogans such as, "Not just another pretty
face."
Despite his initially shocking looks and physical challenges, Mitchell
began white water rafting, he fell in love and married, earned a master's
degree in public administration and continued flying, environmental
activism and public speaking.
Mitchell's unshakable Positive Mental Attitude has earned him
appearances on the "Today Show" and "Good Morning America" as
well as feature articles in Parade, Time, The New York Times and other
publications.
"Before I was paralyzed, there were 10,000 things I could do," Mitchell
says. "Now there are 9,000. I can either dwell on the 1,000 I lost or
focus on the 9,000 I have left. I tell people that I have had two big
bumps in my life. If I have chosen not to use them as an excuse to quit,
then maybe some of the experiences you are having which are pulling
you back can be put into a new perspective. You can step back, take a
wider view and have a chance to say, "Maybe that isn't such a big deal
after all."
Remember: "It's not what happens to you, it's what you do about it."
Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen
Run, Patti, Run
At a young and tender age, Patti Wilson was told by her doctor that she
was an epileptic. Her father, Jim Wilson, is a morning jogger. One day
she smiled through her teenage braces and said, "Daddy what I'd really
love to do is run with you every day, but I'm afraid I'll have a seizure."
Her father told her, "If you do, I know how to handle it so let's start
running!"
That's just what they did every day. It was a wonderful experience for
them to share and there were no seizures at all while she was running.
After a few weeks, she told her father, "Daddy, what I'd really love to
do is break the world's long-distance running record for women."
Her father checked the Guiness Book of World Records and found that
the farthest any woman had run was 80 miles. As a freshman in high
school, Patti announced, "I'm going to run from Orange County up to
San Francisco." (A distance of 400 miles.) "As a sophomore," she went
on, "I'm going to run to Portland, Oregon." (Over 1,500 miles.) "As a
junior I'll run to St. Louis. (About 2,000 miles.) "As a senior I'll run to
the White House." (More than 3,000 miles away.)
In view of her handicap, Patti was as ambitious as she was enthusiastic,
but she said she looked at the handicap of being an epileptic as simply
"an inconvenience." She focused not on what she had lost, but on what
she had left.
That year she completed her run to San Francisco wearing a T-shirt that
read, "I Love Epileptics." Her dad ran every mile at her side, and her
mom, a nurse, followed in a motor home behind them in case anything
went wrong.
In her sophomore year Patti's classmates got behind her. They built a
giant poster that read, "Run, Patti, Run!" (This has since become her
motto and the title of a book she has written.) On her second marathon,
en route to Portland, she fractured a bone in her foot. A doctor told her
she had to stop her run. He said, "I've got to put a cast on your ankle so
that you don't sustain permanent damage."
"Doc, you don't understand,' she said. "This isn't just a whim of mine,
it's a magnificent obsession! I'm not just doing it for me, I'm doing it to
break the chains on the brains that limit so many others. Isn't there a
way I can keep running?" He gave her one option. He could wrap it in
adhesive instead of putting it in a cast. He warned her that it would be
incredibly painful, and he told her, "It will blister." She told the doctor
to wrap it up.
She finished the run to Portland, completing her last mile with the
governor of Oregon. You may have seen the headlines: "Super Runner,
Patti Wilson Ends Marathon For Epilepsy On Her 17th Birthday."
After four months of almost continuous running from the West Coast to
the East Coast, Patti arrived in Washington and shook the hand of the
President of the United States. She told him, "I wanted people to know
that epileptics are normal human beings with normal lives."
I told this story at one of my seminars not long ago, and afterward a big
teary-eyed man came up to me, stuck out his big meaty hand and said,
"Mark, my name is Jim Wilson. You were talking about my daughter,
Patti." Because of her noble efforts, he told me, enough money
had been raised to open up 19 multi-million-dollar epileptic centers
around the country.
If Patti Wilson can do so much with so little, what can you do to
outperform yourself in a state of total wellness?
Mark V. Hansen
The Power Of Determination
The little country schoolhouse was heated by an old-fashioned,
potbellied coal stove. A little boy had the job of coming to school early
each day to start the fire and warm the room before his teacher and his
classmates arrived.
One morning they arrived to find the schoolhouse engulfed in flames.
They dragged the unconscious little boy out of the flaming building
more dead than alive. He had major burns over the lower half of his
body and was taken to the nearby county hospital.
From his bed the dreadfully burned, semi-conscious little boy faintly
heard the doctor talking to his mother. The doctor told his mother that
her son would surely die which was for the best, really for the
terrible fire had devastated the lower half of his body.
But the brave boy didn't want to die. He made up his mind that he
would survive. Somehow, to the amazement of the physician, he did
survive. When the mortal danger was past, he again heard the doctor
and his mother speaking quietly. The mother was told that since the fire
had destroyed so much flesh in the lower part of his body, it would
almost be better if he had died, since he was doomed to be a lifetime
cripple with no use at all of his lower limbs.
Once more the brave boy made up his mind. He would not be a cripple.
He would walk. But unfortunately from the waist down, he had no
motor ability. His thin legs just dangled there, all but lifeless.
Ultimately he was released from the hospital. Every day his mother
would massage his little legs, but there was no feeling, no control,
nothing. Yet his determination that he would walk was as strong as ever.
When he wasn't in bed, he was confined to a wheelchair. One sunny day
his mother wheeled him out into the yard to get some fresh air. This
day, instead of sitting there, he threw himself from the chair. He pulled
himself across the grass, dragging his legs behind him.
He worked his way to the white picket fence bordering their lot. With
great effort, he raised himself up on the fence. Then, stake by stake, he
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