If you’ve ever been in a situation where you were injured in a physical or mental way — or both — you know what we’re talking about when we say: the recovery is often much worse than the injury, for most of us. It doesn’t seem to get any easier with age, either, because the body and mind sustain more wear and tear and display less resilience, in most people.
Understanding that this is a reality, we wanted to bring a few unknown or underused methods that people employ to recover more quickly from an injury. With any luck, these can help you get back on your feet, figuratively and literally!
Take a look at these five ways people can recover more quickly from an injury, physically or mentally.
1. Set goals that allow you to see and celebrate progress
As the author Jill Bolte Taylor states in her book Stroke of Genius, it’s important to set attainable goals and celebrate them as they are achieved. They might not be huge goals, but any progress in a tough recovery is worth celebrating.
This is useful mentally as well as physically. It’s hard to make physical progress if you’re not making mental progress too.
2. Observe yourself
Specifically, observe your emotions. Does something inspire you, or make you sad, or angry, or happy? This is a time when you’ll really need to listen to your emotions, and harness the good ones to help yourself make progress in your recovery.
3. Drink water
Drinking water has a lot of mental and physical health benefits, and this is a vital time to make sure you’re fully hydrated and energized.
4. Sing and laugh and create
Recovery from an injury offers a great opportunity to embrace creativity, and do some laughing and smiling. When you do creative activities and make new pieces of art, you’re firing pistons in your brain that may not have been well used before the injury slowed you down, and jump-starting them into a mode of resilience!
5. Get some assistance and help in recovering
You might consult a psychiatrist or counselor for the mental side of things, or it might be a professional nursing rehabilitation service that you need the most, but don’t hesitate to use every resource available to you for your recovery.
There are professionals who are trained to help you get back to being yourself as quickly as possible.
