Zitat des Tages von Aimee Mullins:
If you're an athlete and you completely focus on the body, you're missing other components. Similarly, if you're trying to broaden your mind but not also being attentive to your sense of humour and your spirit, then you're not going to grow and develop so fast.
It's factual to say I am a bilateral-below-the-knee amputee. I think it's subjective opinion as to whether or not I am disabled because of that. That's just me.
Belief in oneself is incredibly infectious. It generates momentum, the collective force of which far outweighs any kernel of self-doubt that may creep in.
I had a paper round and every night I would put the dinner on before Mum came home from work. I was capable because I had to be.
The legs that I have made are far more perfect than the ones nature would have given me - my mother's side of the family have awful legs.
I hate the words 'handicapped' and 'disabled'. They imply that you are less than whole. I don't see myself that way at all.
The Pentagon isn't a place that champions individuality and innovation.
I like that Pilates compromises the mind and body. It's not just about being able to run around the block a few times. It's about alleviating stress and controlling breathing. It's about being balanced.
I'll be giving a speech at the randomest place, like a bank or something, and a guy in a suit will say, 'I'm totally freaked out that I'm talking to the girl from 'Cremaster.' For the rest of my life, that movie will be playing in a museum somewhere. I never could have expected that huge response.
We all bullet point our triumphs, but I am who I am because of everything you don't see on my CV. The stuff that doesn't work out teaches you how to trust your instincts and adapt.
Walking the runway with Alexander McQueen, I really had to dig deep. You're with Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. I was the first person out on the runway, but I thought, 'I have done the Olympics, I can do this.'
People presume my disability has to do with being an amputee, but that's not the case; our insecurities are our disabilities, and I struggle with those as does everyone.
If you watch any John Hughes film of the eighties, that was my childhood experience.
When I'm curious about something, I do it full on and take it as far as I go, but when I feel like I've really explored it, I'm OK with putting it aside and going on to something else.
I've had journalists asking me, 'What do we call you - is it handicapped, are you disabled, physically challenged?' I said, 'Well hopefully you could just call me Aimee. But if you have to describe it, I'm a bilateral below-the-knee amputee.'
I was once told that I had become too confident and that it made me less likeable. Many successful people will get this at some point, because the people who haven't followed a similar path can be threatened by someone who has and is unabashed about it.
I have learned not to overlook the advantages of being me. From when I was a softball player, and I held the stolen bases record. I would slide into second with my prostheses, and the girl on the base could either step aside or meet two wooden sticks.
I'm not running around as a continual ray of sunshine. It's just I don't believe in wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Get over it.
Giving up is conceding that things will never get better, and that is just not true. Ups and downs are a constant in life, and I've been belted into that roller coaster a thousand times.
I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy. I don't speak for such huge and diverse groups. What I've tried to do, what I've been fortunate to do, is to live my live and create my life as I've wanted to create it.
In athletics, the idea of possibility is presumed. It's not 'if;' it's 'how.'
Pamela Anderson has more prosthetic in her body than I do. Nobody calls her disabled.
Kids are naturally curious about what they don't know, or don't understand, or what is foreign to them. They only learn to be frightened of those differences when an adult influences them to behave that way and censors that natural curiosity.
At some point in every person's life, you will need an assisted medical device - whether it's your glasses, your contacts, or as you age and you have a hip replacement or a knee replacement or a pacemaker. The prosthetic generation is all around us.
Adversity isn't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It's part of our life.
The idea of prosthetics is a tool. Most people's cell phones are prosthetics. If you leave your cell phone at home, you feel impacted by not having it. It's an important part of your daily function and what you can do in a day.
