Heal Properly. Come Out Stronger.
I spent the past seven weeks or so recovering from a broken collarbone. It has been the most frustrating recovery process I've ever experienced.
The reason why it's so frustrating is not that my body cannot physically heal. It's that my mind will not allow my body to heal as efficiently as it can. Ironically, efficiency does not equal speed in this scenario.
Speed Kills
If you know me well, you know I'm obsessed with speed. I love it and all fashions. Well, almost all. I don't like fast food because it's not healthy. I have justified the time it takes to source ingredients for and and create a healthy meal.
Even pictures of speed are exciting.
Outside of fast food, I love speed everywhere else. I love it especially in sports but also in my mind and with my ears.
I like to think of myself as a pretty good speed reader and my wife will tell you I listen to way more podcasts than most people using three times speed. In fact, I got into a heated Twitter debate (not that heated) about how fast one can actually listen to a podcast and still retain information. For me, it's around three times speed. It can make it up to four but you really have to know what's going on and understand the subject matter to enjoy it.
Anything faster than three times (four is about max) would generally need to fall into the entertainment category. It can’t be educational. Otherwise, you would certainly miss important information.
In sports, they say “speed kills” because a faster athlete will get to a spot faster than another. It’s simple.
Our minds though, are not that simple. Think of all the skills it takes to play a specific sport that might be helpful. For example, a wide receiver in football should be fast but MUST be able to catch the ball. You would certainly choose the faster athlete assuming the basic competency requirements catching the ball. But if it wasn’t a given, you’d be at risk of having a useless player.
Imagine an endless amount of skills and abilities to evaluate in a given situation. That’s what working with the mind is like. It’s infinitely more complicated than physical skills. It’s easy to identify a good shooter after seeing a basketball player sink just a couple shots. It takes much more to evaluate the quality of someone’s intellect.
School would be so much easier if all your tests only took one minute. I’ll have to ask all the teachers in my family what they think about that.
In sports, speed kills your opponent. In life, speed often kills you.
Taking Time for Efficiency
Ironically, my clavicle injury is a result of playing sports (frisbee, I know, I’m still not sure it’s a sport, I’m gunna pay for typing that).
The injury has had a much larger affect on my life than just my amateur sports career. It’s made many other things impossible or very challenging. For example, I am currently able to type out this entry. The first couple weeks of my injury didn’t allow this. Thankfully, I was able to use dictation. But, it wasn’t ideal. There were always quite a few mistakes and sometimes they were completely indecipherable.
I’ve had a few minor setbacks with the healing process because I tried to go too fast. I have accidentally moved my arm too fast and I have also assumed I was healthier than I was and sped up the timeline for activity. In other words, I’ve unintentionally and intentionally gone faster and each time has resulted in a slower recovery.
Another example that I can think of is related to home care. I love living in the climate that South Florida brings but one drawback is that there is never a season where it is acceptable to have a dirty driveway and sidewalks. They are always exposed (it doesn’t snow here).
You have to pressure clean in order to prevent dirt and mold from accumulating on and between the slabs of a sidewalk. My mind likes to crank on the pressure cleaner to start blasting dirt as quickly as possible. Come to find out, a slow more methodical process is the way to go. In the end, you’ll find cleaner slabs, less wavy lines (a result of inaccurate aim of the water blast), and more time leftover.
Winning
The Impactmaker Movement is all about winning at positive impact. You are a driven person. You want to achieve great things.
Wanting to do well isn’t that unique. It’s the desire to win by helping others do better (and win themselves) that makes an impactmaker stand out. This should be celebrated.
I love celebrating. But, I’m also a realist. I know that you can't win every time. I’ve also noticed on many occasions that the reason why we have something to “win” is that we have lost something as a society. It could be a battle against evil, it could be our senses, or even a group of people.
You can’t win ‘em all.
To be real: we’re losing some battles. I do however, believe that we can turn it around and win them.
Another favorite quote of mine that seems to be coming up a lot recently is:
Failures are hurdles of success.
This is me admitting that we have to fail and me tell you to be willing. It’s part of success (winning). Don’t fear it. See E-Impact 82.
You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable (credit that saying to Gregoire Narcisse from Speaking of Impact episode 11).
The biggest discomfort for someone who wants to win is losing; but it’s necessary for success.
They say a broken bone heals stronger than it was before the break. I hope that is the case with my collarbone. But, I know it’s the case with my impact projects.
I’ve had to experience short-term failure to find success in the long run.
Intentional Healing
I looked up how long it would take to heal immediately after getting home from the doctor’s when I found out I had a broken clavicle.
I wanted speed!
Johns Hopkins told me it could take ten to twelve weeks. That could be three months. What a drag.
The orthopedic told me that I really couldn’t move my arm at all in the early going. I am at the point now of moving my lower arm freely and my upper arm with extreme caution. I was also told that I’ll need to do some rehabilitating.
“Rehab”, in all its forms, is intentional healing.
I’ve come to grips that I need rehabilitation. What I don’t need is powering through.
This is a strikingly similar situation to my battle with cancer described in Speaking of Impact episode 1. There, I thought I powered through. It wasn’t until years later that I realized what actually happened.
Intentionality is one of the most powerful forces in our life.
You should believe in something. Yet, the application is where something happens.
And that’s what we want in The Impactmaker Movement. We went something to happen: positive change.
Application
Here’s where it gets hard. Failing (or falling on cement and breaking a bone) is pretty easy. Winning is definitely easy.
The challenge is switching from losing to winning. The learning (rehab) process is where we earn our impactmaker “stripes”.
The way you apply your lessons is very important. You have to “heal” properly in order to come out stronger.
I learned quickly that my collarbone wouldn’t heal if I moved my arm much. I also learned that I would need to gradually move it more in order to keep functionality in my shoulder.
Emotional health isn’t very different from physical.
You’re going to get beat up trying to make positive change in the world. After all, we’re battling against negativity. It’s hard work.
Once again, losing to negativity is not hard. There is plenty of it. You have to find the right pace of recovers.
Remember, speed kills and intentionality wins.
The 5 Steps of How
We have plenty of “whys”. See E-Impact 79.
I trust you are motivated to heal properly and come out stronger.
You need “how”.
Here are the steps:
Identify the Loss - This seems simple but I think many of us have a tendency to overlook our losses. This is because we are either hyper-focused on winning or afraid and ashamed of loss (as referenced earlier).
Acknowledge the Opportunity - Many resources will tell you to acknowledge your loss. To me, that comes with the identification. You wouldn’t be able to identify it if you hadn’t experienced. This is different than a physical injury. For example, some broken bones are easily seen. The opportunity is also easy to see. In the impact space, you have to do a bit more work to find the lesson and potential win that can come from your loss. Ask yourself, “What will I do in the future to avoid this from happening again?”. That’s the chance to get better and win the next time.
Repeat - This will take a bit of courage. You will have to put yourself in the same, or a similar situation, to take advantage of the opportunity. Retrace your previous steps until the point you need to change.
Document - Don’t skip this! Document what you did in the previous step. This is so you can replicate.
Share - You have to share. Partially because that’s what impactmakers do with “good” - but also because it’s how you perfect your lesson. They say perfect is the enemy of good. This is why you take on step four. However, sharing will enable to you maximize the lesson because the best way to learn something is to teach it. You’ll be better for showing others how you won.
Enjoy
Don’t forget to have fun. You can’t beat yourself up in hopes of “better” lessons.
Work hard. Expect success and failure. Implement the healing steps as needed.
Speed kills. Strength sustains.