By Sarah Carter, LCSW
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” –Viktor E. Frankl
Our choices can have a significant impact on our recovery/mental health and overall mindset. When we consider the gains that our daily choices make it can have a considerable impact on our trajectory over the next week, year, and throughout the course of our lives. Having a future vision is key to our success. It’s through our application of our goals each day that we will find considerable success if we are willing to stay in the practice, show up and try each day. When we take the time to consider the potential that our choices have to free up our ability to consider the options that are leading us towards our goal or away from our goal. It’s through our application of our goals each day that we will find considerable success if we are willing to stay the course, show up and try each day. We need to accept that failures are part of success. We will not do it perfectly and we will have hard days. If we are willing to work with our failures with compassion and understanding we can gain insight on how to improve our circumstance as we focus on Emotional, Spiritual, Intellectual and Physical well-being.
Two years ago, I injured my shoulder. It became frozen and the more I didn’t move my shoulder the more it locked up. I engaged in Physical Therapy and that allowed me to make progress but eventually after a few months, I plateaued. I got really curious about what I was going to do. If knew that if I didn’t do anything, I would get worse. So, I started swimming. I considered a way that I could bring a lot of movement to my arm and work on activating the muscles that weren’t working. Through application, I taught myself how to swim freestyle. After 6 months my shoulder moved to almost complete range and motion. In addition, I found a professional to help me with moving past the stagnation that I was experiencing.
When we consider the solutions to our problems instead of focusing on weight of problems we are able to engage in an incredible creative process that allows ideas to form. We become an active participant in our life, and we can choose to step into our power and develop the skills that will allow us to become who we are meant to be.
