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If you’re in rehab, or out, or a living person, you have thoughts.
Focusing on people in rehab recovering from a spinal cord injury, this is the story of how I never had a bad day in rehab and how I never got depressed. Every day in rehab, I was happy, I had fun and I grew as a person and in my abilities.
There are a lot of things you can do to make sure you’re successful in rehab, we’ll eventually talk about all of them, but today, we’ll be covering some ways of thinking that can help us not only succeed but prosper.
When it comes to mentalities, sometimes it can help to have some guidance on how to think. You feel alone, I did at least. You don’t know what to think and you can only hope that you’re right, but what models do you have? In the business world, we can always use Richard Branson as a model but there isn’t any amazing mythical man to look to, not for stuff like this. This is personal and it’s different for everyone.
That being said, I’ll talk about 3 mentalities that I found to help me and others when going through rehab or a tough time.
You can take the bits that resonate and forget the rest. Because I always say that I’m honest, here’s a little personal story. When I watched the notebook for the first time, I cried. I also cried the second time I watched it. I also cry when I see an act of valor, I cry at almost every superhero movie. I cry when I read books, I mostly read biographies and most of them are about people in the past. I’m a cryer, but I never cried over my injury. Not once. Regardless of that, I’m usually quick to tears. I typically own up to any of my traits – the good and bad – but when it comes to crying, I always tried to hide it or suppress it. This was because I had no model. When it comes to human psychology, we always need some form of validation for our actions. Meaning that sometimes all it takes is to see that someone else is going through something similar and then we’ll feel good about following the path paved by our hearts. The crying validation came when I was reading the biography of Winston Churchill, he was notorious for crying, and now I don’t feel so repressive about crying.
I hope that these 3 mentalities will give you some guidance for overcoming any obstacle that comes your way.
1. The Push-Door Mentality
It begins with what I call the “push-door mentality”. It’s about acceptance. Subconsciously, I immediately accepted what happened when I got injured and moved past it, that’s how I was able to do everything I did. Some people don’t accept their injury for years, and those years get drowned in self-pity. I don’t know about you, but I never had time to feel sorry for myself, I only had time to achieve. I do actually feel sorry for myself sometimes, but not for more than 5 minutes before I catch myself.
You may think “why did this happen to me?!” I don’t have an answer, you might be religious, but whatever your beliefs are, there is a reason. It may not be the one that you’re looking for, but there is a definitive reason. You had your injury due to something happening (that’s how things happen). Nothing is completely predictable, but if your hindsight is decent, then you’ll be able to analyze the situation objectively.
For me, I know exactly why this happened, I was a risk-taker, I loved adrenaline and I wanted to always try something slightly or extremely dangerous. Usually, I take calculated risks, this one wasn’t as calculated. When I was skiing, I jumped off a ramp, going very fast, and lost control. Then, as I hit the ground, a few things happened to my vertebrae that shouldn’t, they hit my spinal cord and it got bruised. We could even go as far as talking about the physics of the force impacting my body and get really detailed about why it happened.
Whether or not a strictly analytical approach helps, what I’m saying is that unless you’re a historian, you don’t need to waste any of your precious time pondering in despair about why this happened to you. Trust that it’ll all work out, and it will.
I’ve always imagined it like this: you want to go through a door, this door is the entrance to heaven, to Atlantis, or anything majestic enough to give you a rush of endorphins. The door had a handle on it because it’s a door and that’s how most of them are. Nothing else is on the door, however. You pull on the door as hard as you can. You’re very strong and yet, the door is not giving way. You pull some more, you think about why you can’t open this door. You rationalize like anybody else that maybe it just isn’t for you, maybe the door is locked, you’re sure that the door should pull open. No doubt that the door is a pull. You curse every deity and then pout in frustration. The PULL door is not pulling open. Well, it’s actually a push door. Until you accept that the door is a push door, you won’t be able to get through. All you have to do is accept the fact that the door is a push. Once you get in, who cares about how the door opened?
That’s the best Cosmo fable I have about acceptance (for now). The point is that there is a life full of opportunity, happiness, success and love waiting for you.
You’ll be blind to this potential life if all you think about is the past and never accept what happened. Because all humans have to rationalize everything, you can tell yourself whatever you please, you can say that it had to be you. In the movie of our lives, we’re the main character and this might be poetic justice or just something to make the story interesting, but the last thing that makes a life interesting is not accepting and subsequently doing nothing and living in despair.
This is something that happened, that reality can’t be refuted, you can always think about what you wish you did different, but regret doesn’t mend a broken jar. You have control over how you react. Every hero has obstacles, in the first Iron Man, Tony Stark didn’t just accept that he was captured in a cave. He did accept that he has a cool energy circle in his chest and he used that injury to his advantage to become Iron Man. This is your life, you can sulk about what happened and question it, or you can accept it, and once you do, you become bigger than it and you can move on to greater things.
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry
Winston Churchill
A quote by Churchill that I live by is “A man is about as big as the things that make him angry”
If you let little things bother you, you shrink down to that size. Sometimes I let little things bother me, but then I see this quote and remember that I’m only worthy of big problems. Once you accept your injury, you become bigger than it and once you do that, you can focus on your motion picture life, make it a story about success and overcoming obstacles, win a Grammy.
2. The Generous-Luck Mentality
Following the push-door mentality, we get to the greedy-guilt dilemma. Has anyone ever told you that you’re lucky it wasn’t worse? And they kind of make you feel bad for thinking you’d be lucky if it were just a little bit better. Do you want more and feel bad about it because some people are worse and wish they were like you? or that you should be happy with what you have and it’s bad to want more?
All this is utter bullshit. Sorry, that’s actually unfair to bull’s shit. Just writing that upset me. Never think like that.
People who tell you that you’re lucky to not be worse, and we’ve all been that person in some way, don’t know what else to say. They’re just trying to be helpful, but don’t believe it. No shit, it totally could’ve been worse, but if we’re playing the “you’re lucky, it could’ve been worse” game, then we may as well talk about how much luckier we could’ve been and look to people who ended up better than us. Comparison is the thief of joy. Don’t ever feel bad for wanting more. If no one ever wanted more, we’d all be satisfied with fire being the newest invention and stop there, long before the wheel and the written word. You need to want more. And don’t feel bad about it. Tell the world, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. The only problem with wanting more is that you can get lost in those thoughts. Thinking too much about the “more” that you want, and don’t have, can put you in a slump.
Here’s the story. When I was in rehab I was always doing something crazy. One day, they brought in a mountain bike for me to try out and see if it peaked my interest. Naturally, I took it up some stairs. It is a mountain bike after all. There was a guy in rehab, really cool guy, he was also quadriplegic. While I was going up the stairs and had pretty much everyone stopping to watch, I was the first one to do this and my therapist was probably having heart palpitations, possibly because my hair looked great. My friend wasn’t able to turn around to watch me, but he really wanted to. We talked for a little bit on my last day as I was saying goodbye to everyone and he was telling me how much I inspired him to push harder each day and that he would never give up. I was happy to hear that, he also told me that he really can’t wait to gain more control so that he can be more independent. Of course, I encourage this, I want to inspire people so that they are motivated to strive for more, however, I wanted to make sure that while he was going down the road to recovery, he stopped for gas and took the time to observe the beautiful scenery called life. I told him that even if he doesn’t get much control back, he could still go into politics, all they do is talk, really.
(Second picture)
The point being that although we do need to focus on the future and always strive for more, if you only plan for what your life will be like in 10 years, you’ll miss each day. That man had control over his most important asset, his mind. He could still hear, see, talk and think (and smell). He could become a writer, or even a programmer with today’s technology. Don’t overlook today’s possibilities in lieu of the future.
It is okay to want more, but don’t become so focused on it that you forget about today and never feel bad for wanting more. Always want more and never feel bad about it, but you won’t get anywhere unless you work with today, master the day and then let it build the foundations for the future you want. It’s becoming trite at this point, but I want to emphasize that you should NOT feel guilty for wanting more. You don’t have to believe you were lucky it wasn’t worse, because it also could’ve been better. Be greedy with your ambitions, just don’t get so caught up in them that you miss the moment
3. The Steamroller Mentality
Once you accept and stop feeling bad about wanting more, there is another mentality that we can address. It’s called the “steamroller mentality” it’s about accepting a challenge and taking the next step or sometimes skipping steps.
When you’re in rehab, every day is a chance to improve and get closer to independence. The mentality I had was to make extreme progress like never before. In the rehab world, I was told about a term that I would have my sights locked in on for the next 4 weeks. Mod-i. Modified independence, which is fancy talk for being able to live on your own. On my second day in rehab, I had my first physical therapy session. One of the first things I said was that I was going to reach mod-i in three days. “I’m a steamroller baby” – Elvis.
I was absolutely determined, I knew what I was after and I didn’t waste any time. I requested for more hours of therapy each day and I woke up ready to have a great day. Not only was I getting stronger, I was gaining my independence, overcoming new challenges and I was surrounded by amazing people who all supported me and helped me achieve more. I would banter with everyone, post about my day on instagram and get even more support from there. Also, everyone was attractive and who doesn’t enjoy being around beautiful minds and faces all day?
I digress, sometimes often, back to the story. When I had my first therapy session, the first thing that I had to learn was transferring. The therapist had this really long cutting board, which they call a transfer board but I’m not convinced, this cutting board was supposed to be used as a little mediary for getting me from the bed to my chair. I asked “what would come after this?” “is this the end of the line or is there something else that I would do after I get good at using this cutting board?” The answer was that I would eventually move to transferring without a cutting board. I told the therapist that I didn’t want to use the cutting board. And that was the last time I saw it.
Here’s the logic (or whatever you deem it): I don’t want to waste time getting good at something redundant. I’d rather spend that time learning the crescendo, the advanced material.
This logic doesn’t apply to everything, but for everything I did, I questioned it, not in a condescending manner, but because I wanted to understand if it laid a necessary foundation for something else or if I could skip it. Even if I couldn’t skip it, I wanted to know what was next. I would always ask something like “assuming I master this today, what would we do tomorrow?”
This is one of those mentalities that keeps you from just taking things as they come. Taking control over what you’re doing, learning what it leads to and challenging yourself. There were times that I asked to try the coda, tried, failed, and had to revert to a lesser practice, but at least I tried and knew that I needed to build up to it. I’d rather be sure that I can’t do something the hard way.
And that’s it. Those three mentalities. The push-door, the greedy-guilt, and the steamroller mentality. They’ve helped me and they pave the road for an even more fortitudinous mind.
Here’s a cool picture:
Immediate action items: Write down how you could implement these mentalities into your life and begin to act with these mentalities as soon as you identified where they fit into your beautiful life.
Summary: The three mentalities that helped me overcome and prosper: acceptance, not feeling guilty for wanting more and always asking for more challenges.
Overdeliver: Another thing that helped me a lot was support from friends and family. My mom was with me the whole time and I had a visitor (friend/family) every weekend. I also listened to music all the time. If you find that you have too much time to think and you begin to get existential, try listening to podcasts, calling friends or taking up some art (poetry, drawing, painting, writing, reading).
Wheelchair DNA 
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