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Unforeseen Catalyst: My Journey to Wellness
An Unexpected Turn Sparks a Journey to Personal Transformation
Catalysts act on the status quo and provide motivation to move out of their inert state.
The genesis of my wellness self-optimization journey involves a football, a wildly inaccurate throw and my head as the inadvertent target.
Growing up, I was always aware that I had a potential genetic predisposition to brain degradation. My dad passed away in his 40s from a brain tumour, and two of my grandparents suffered from neurodegenerative disease: if I was ever going to have a chance to see my great-grandchildren, I was going to have to make some changes in the way I lived.
The class started like most others: corral the 30-plus thirteen-year-old boys into a common area to try and explain the plan for the day. In many ways, the name teacher was too optimistic; Chaos Controller better illustrated the plight of a junior high school physical education teacher: many days, the goal was as much survival as it was education.
We headed outside into the brisk October morning to play flag football. T-shirts and shorts were the common attire choices, regardless of the temperature. After our warm-up, I introduced how to properly grip and release a football (in hindsight, my poor…
