Aimee Mullins is a striking woman. Beautiful, tall or omgz tall (depending on the prosthetics she wears), a fashion model, an actress, a New Yorker, a highly decorated runner (she was the first amputee to compete in the NCAA track alongside able-bodied athletes), and one of the best motivational speakers in the country.
But she’s not your average “rah rah I’m disabled” motivational speaker. Her message is powerful in a non-preachy way, focusing on the notion of adversity and looking at it in a fresh way. She challenges the way the world thinks about people with physical challenges. We are not less than, for our adversity has forced us to think outside the box and evolve, as she eloquently expresses in her speech, which is available here on CNN (10 minutes long and totally worth clicking).
Her speech reminded me of my friend Mark E. Felling, an engineer and pilot who broke his neck a few years ago in a plane crash. Since his injury, he has refocused his engineering skills on creating products to help people like him, paralyzed with limited arm movement. Mark founded Broadened Horizons, and he’s developed some impressive high-tech products since refocusing his energies in this more unique direction. He’s created a environmental voice control systems, enhanced cell phone useability systems that help people with limited arm movement freely use their phones, and accessible gaming systems, creating controllers for the PS3, Xbox, and more.
Mark would have never been moved to create these products if it wasn’t for the adversity he‘s experienced. His injury hastened him to create smarter technology. This technology, while presently applied to products for the disabled, could easily be applied to other products that everyone, able-bodied or disabled, could use. Adversity is in many ways GOOD for humans, and that‘s why I‘m grateful to Aimee Mullins and her speech for pointing that out. If it wasn’t for adversity, some kind of struggle, nothing would ever happen in this world.
“The human ability to adapt is our greatest asset,” says Aimee Mullins. She couldn’t be more right.
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