i'm not perfect (but parts of me are pretty good)

Evolving Toward Wellness
An Occasional Series About SeekWellness Visitors

Sometimes it seems that self-managing lifestyles are too demanding, that only heroes and heroines can pull it off. Not so. While getting started is usually a difficult period of adjustment and sacrifice, once underway, a wellness lifestyle becomes self-renewing because of the daily satisfactions and positive results that occur from carrying out a commitment to excellence. Don't take my word for it. Read the stories of people much like yourself who are doing -- and loving it.

Have you experienced any major changes in lifestyle? If so, please tell us about it and let us know how you got started, what inspired you, helped you make the change, how you feel about it now, what difference the changes have made in your relationships, fortune, health or whatever. Attach a photo -- we might want to make you a star or at least give you some of those 15 minutes of fame that we're all promised. Send me your story now.

Thanks. Enjoy Marshall's story, below.

My Story

by Marshall Cothran

This story is what the writer describes as "just a candid personal note from a becomer," but I think it is inspirational and encouraging for anyone who struggles to stay focused on a healthy lifestyle. The author, Marshall Cothran, added that "if even one person can relate, I'd be thrilled." I think lots of people will relate -- so I do hope he gains those deserved thrills.

In granting permission to share this post, sent as a personal communication to me after a recent talk I delivered at a medical conference in Washington, DC, Marshall added this: "I had unwittingly set myself up (Ed: For enjoying the talk) having just finished reading Thomas Wolfe's Care of the Soul. That was still tumbling around in my head when I arrived for your presentation, which turned out to be the catalyst to bring it all together for me, that is, to realize that its really all about wellness. Thanks...

Marshall’s Story

I just want to thank you again for the AAMSE seminar, for your book and for your timely motivating follow-up messages. I ran my first marathon in 1985 at age 36 (Dallas White Rock in 3:45.) Thirteen years and two lower lumbar discectomies (in 1993/94) later, and with an admonition from my spine surgeon not to run again, I completed the Austin Motorola in an easy-does-it 4:40, with no spine complications. My whole motivation was out of whack, however; it was more a singular act of defiance (to prove a point to my surgeon) rather than wellness, a concept I still didn't really get.

That was 1998 and, I'm sorry to say, I've been pretty much sedentary since -- until this AAMSE meeting, that is. You have inspired me to see wellness differently, and to go for it -- for the long run! I'm out of shape but working the 14 Days program, checking off each completed step. I'm getting my butt up most mornings and running/fast walking. It’s only a start, but I have joined the “Austin Fit” training program and plan to do the Motorola Marathon again in February for motivation to keep going.

I'm mighty grateful for your giving me a new perspective on reality. Normal sucks. Well, I wasn't totally normal; I got my private pilot's license just over a year ago after turning 50. Looking back at it through the paradigm you gave us at AAMSE, I now see that achievement (the fulfillment of a lifelong dream -- fantasy really) as a heroic act of wellness. That’s a good way to see it.

Maybe - just maybe - I am finally "getting" this deceptively simple but powerful concept of wellness. I'll let you know -- but for now, it’s on to day five.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Marshall Cothran
Austin, Texas

August 2001