Are you recovering from a serious injury?
Healing from an injury is a critical time for mental strength, because it’s easy to loose focus on what is possible, and instead feel hopeless about getting better.
Staying positive while recovering from injury is the BEST WAY to avoid the pitfalls of feeling down and giving up.
But keeping a positive attitude after you’ve had a serious injury, especially an injury that ends your season or stops you from performing at your best, can be hard to do!
Use your thoughts to orchestrate powerful teamwork that allows healing happen.
The pattern here is to move through your injury recovery focusing each aspect of your days with the intension to heal your body, heal your injury.
Here are some tips I have seen in action to help your mental, spiritual and physical self stay focused on the prize of performing at 100% as soon as possible.
- Staying Positive Is The Most Important Part
- Support Your Body The Best You Can
- Positive Self Talk
- Eat Smart
- Stay Extra Hydrated
- Breathe With Intension
- Rest Often
- Pray Daily
- Find Support Around You
- Encourage Others Who Are Injured
- Conclusion: Effective Tips to Recover Faster From Injury
Staying Positive Is The MOST Important Part
It can be hard to keep hope and think that you won’t get out of this injury ever to play or compete again. EVER. We understand. But…try to keep your chin up. Remember statements like:
“Days injured make me grateful for the days I’m healthy!”
“This is a great lesson in being patient.”
“I’m learning to slow down and pay attention to what’s really important.”
“My health is the most important resource I have.”
“Never give up!”
During the healing process, remember that sometimes you have to take 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Just because you could walk yesterday but you can’t today is a natural part of this process for any injury, no matter how severe or simple.
This is the time when being MENTALLY STRONG can support your body while it’s healing.
Let your thoughts do the heavy lifting for during recovery!
There are many books with excellent tips about staying positive. Pick 1-2 ideas or concepts and stick with them. Master them.
Below are a few tips that can help you keep a positive mindset, focus, attitude, or mood.
Support Your Body The Best You Can
Think of everything you know that is good for your body. This includes your mind & spirit. Do this in every aspect of your day, including but not limited to:
- Positive self talk
- Eat smart
- Stay extra hydrated
- Breathe with intension
- Rest often
- Prayer Daily
- Get fresh air
Do each task with intension to heal:
Think of the cells getting more energy for healing while you are resting. Think of your cells getting more oxygen when you breathe. Forgive yourself or anything/one you need to forgive to have a clear mind so you can support your healing. Advocate for your body. Listen to it and then respond to it.
Give yourself the BEST CHANCE to heal quickly and completely.
Use Positive Self Talk
The most important concept is worth repeating: Having a positive outlook about your recovery is the BEST thing you can do.
This includes positive self talk.
Notice what you are saying to yourself on a moment by moment basis. If you catch statements that are not positive, try to change those.
“I could have prevented this injury”
“I deserve to be hurt”
“I’m never going to get better”
“They don’t understand what I’m going through”
“If I don’t have my sport, what do I have?”
You can change these thoughts in the second you have them. The trick is to “catch them in the act.”
Many people don’t even realize they are talking to themselves in a negative manner, and need to be convinced that it’s happening. It’s an ingrained pattern of beating ourselves up with our thoughts, and every human does it at one point.
Mastering this process of positive self talk can make a huge difference in your recovery time.
My favorite books on having & keeping a positive attitude:
Eat Smart
Of course you know that eating well is good for your health. But, there are SPECIFIC foods that help you heal faster. On the same line of thinking, there are foods that will HINDER, STOP or sometimes REVERSE your healing! So choose carefully!
Select healing foods for your body with the INTENSION of creating the BEST HEALING ENVIRONMENT inside your body!
Eat foods with powerful healing properties and avoid sugar, alcohol, processed foods & preservatives.
Here are some of my favorite articles on healing foods:
Stay Extra Hydrated
Drink more water than you would during a day of working out or playing your sport.
Drink water with the INTENSION of healing your injury.
You CAN over-hydrate, so keep that in mind. Check with your doctor if you are unsure of how much water you should drink. It’s different for each age group, how active you are, what climate you live it and many other factors.
MOST people don’t drink enough water. They may drink coffee, alcohol, soda or fruit juice, but these don’t really count towards your WATER GOAL.
Think of plain water as a medicine for your cells, and having anything else in your water makes it less effective.
Dehydration is a common condition that affects patients of all ages, according to the National Center of Biotechnology Information (NCBI), and according “lay press” (which is not supported by medical literature) over 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated!
Breathe With Intension
Breathing deeply and slowly can be very helpful to reduce pain and to have the ability to relax, which makes the healing process much easier.
Some articles on breathing for recovery
Rest Often
Rest to heal, not just to rest.
Do you track your sleep, how long you’re sleeping, how well you sleep? There are many devices you can use to track this for you.
Rest is a huge component in your healing process! It’s often overlooked.
When you aren’t doing your sport or activity, you have extra time to REST! You can take a nap!
Check out these articles on sleep & napping
Pray Daily
Involving your higher power and the power of prayer is always something I recommend.
Some people find it difficult to pray for their own healing, but this is important. Not only is praying for yourself important for your healing process, but also to “clean up” your relationship with your higher power, God, etc.
This relationship can get in the way of having the most effective healing environment if you have doubts, anger or questions about how your spirituality fit into your life. Especially into your healing life.
If you are good with this relationship between your mind & spirit, body & spirit, then try to make your daily (hourly?) prayers/mantras very clear.
Ask for healing, but be specific with your words, and also include requests about your thoughts, environment, gratefulness and patience.
Prayer can bring you comfort and focus by calming your thoughts and giving your thoughts a way to help.
Check out these articles prayer & healing
Find Support Around You
Seek out support! Don’t try to do injury recovery alone. Even if you don’t have anyone around you, but you have internet access, then there is support at your fingertips.
Having a friend encourage you means more in a time of hopelessness than can be expressed in writing right now.
This is not the time to be “tough”. This is the time to ALLOW other’s gift of giving to shine through. If you have a hard time letting people help you, consider this:
Sometimes letting someone help you is more about their NEED TO HELP another human and less about you. So, you are doing them a service by allowing them to support you.
Encourage Others Who Are Injured
Helping others around you can be a BIG boost to your own positive outlook!
If you don’t feel like being positive about your own situation, you may be able to increase your motivation by supporting and encouraging others.
Then, you can feed off of the motivation you are able to express for others and now be able to turn that motivation towards your own recovery, one workout at a time.
Conclusion: Effective Tips to Recover Faster From Injury
Start and end with keeping your attitude positive. This is the most important aspect of quick healing from an injury.
Use common sense to take care of yourself and your environment to make your world as efficient and effective at healing your injury and keeping your thoughts positive.
Rest often, drink plenty of water, stay positive, pray daily and eat healing foods.
Seek out support and try to encourage others with injuries to help them on their journey.
You’ve got this!
I’m here to help if you need support.
