Don Ardell is an old friend who produces a highly entertaining, irreverent, and thought provoking weekly newsletter, the Electronic Ardell Wellness Report (E-AWR). Don was way ahead of his time when he wrote "High Level Wellness" in 1977, and he's still ahead of his time in the year 2000, with his wellness perspective on life. He swims, rides, and runs his talk and is currently world champion for his age group in the triathlon. If you would like more information about Don's report, send him an email at donardel@tampabay.rr.com.

Martin Collis

by Donald Ardell, Ph.D. – Ardell Wellness Report

What interferes with your continued progress toward the heights of wellness, given your best possibilities, within reason? I specify "within reason" because there are only so many hours in a day, week or life, so let's be realistic. In the name of balance and moderation and all that, it's sometimes helpful to recall that there are many things to be done or attempted that have little to do with advances toward the apogee of one's welldom. Still, it might be useful when setting wellness goals to summon to conscious awareness an explicit image of the nature of your personal obstacles. You might ask yourself, in the spirit of Joseph Heller's Yossarian, "Who is the enemy?" Yossarian's timeless answer in "Catch 22" was, "The enemy is anybody who shoots at you. And anybody who sends you out to be shot at." So it is with your efforts to be truly well, beyond the pale of normalcy. The enemy or obstacle is anybody, or anything, that puts you in harm's way. And harm takes many forms, not just bullets. Maybe, as Robert F. Allen famously advised, it was the unseen cultures, norms, customs and rituals we adopted without deliberations, little by little, over time. Just a thought.

Which, by the way, occurred to me the other day when I heard a preacher intoning the sacred phrase "people of color." A few days later, I encountered a gaggle of presidential wannabes going on about "people of faith." Soon thereafter, I picked up on the phrase people of this, people of that, and people of one thing or another ad infinitum. Hey, what's with that? What am I a people of? I want in! How about wellness seekers of any color, faith or no faith, male or female, gay/straight/bent, or whatever!?

Let's start an inclusive category to which all can qualify, one that can be earned by behavior, not born into or reserved for those who favor superstition over reason. People of Wellness! I like that. I've already come up with a bumper sticker for us. "Set free the POW."

Just a thought.

You realize, I'm sure, that there is only one person who can set free the PERSON of wellness. This is the one who ought to be your prime concern in this matter of setting free the POW. Twain said "Troubles are only mental; it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can forget them, banish them, forget them." YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE remains the mantra of wellness. Take a close, conscious look at the cultures, norms, customs and rituals you were fed and which you digested, little by little, bit by bit, over time during your formative years. Set free your own mind from the nonsense, the dogma, the clichés and the platitudes. These are the enemy of your capacity for reason. These are the forces that constitute the enemy of your conscious evolution to the best life attainable.

Thus, a bumper sticker proclaiming "Set free the POW" won't work, for they can set themselves free at any time, as Twain suggests. It is the OTHER guys who need freeing. So, the better bumper sticker might be "Set yourself free — and become a POW!"

John Bailiff suggests that one of the tasks of wellness must be some sort of non-attachment in the face of "groundless but passionate belief." Since the placebo effect is demonstrably the most efficient process for healing or behavior change, it doesn't matter at all WHAT people believe, as long as it works. As Nietzsche pointed out long ago, "illusion is the most functional of human inventions."

Just a thought, not a theory. Unlike my theories, just maybe, perhaps, there's something to this thought. But, as with everything, there are no guarantees. You are responsible.