If You Can’t Believe It, It’ll Be Hard to Achieve It

Accidents Happen

I broke my ankle catastrophically almost two years ago. Every bone, all the way around.

How?

Slipping on the slipperiest math flashcards known to man. On a pile of them, on our second step (out of a flight of only seven steps), left there by our (at the time) four-year old son, Leo.

Ironically, I was carrying him to TIME OUT for refusing to pick up those very same flashcards.

The orthopedic surgeon was astonished that I’d managed to break my ankle that way: “but it just takes a TREMENDOUS amount of force to break your ankle like this…” …As if I’d offer a different explanation if he emphasized that.

Other nurses and medical assistants told me I “needed a better story.” I think it scared the shit out of them that it was possible to break an ankle so horribly in such an every day benign situation.

It was THE toughest time of my life.

Just Your Usual Everyday Experience of Hell on Earth

In a split second, I went from capable and mobile to agony and immobility. Little did I know, at that time, that my left foot wouldn’t touch the ground for EIGHT WEEKS; That I would spend a week with my foot elevated above my heart—before I would be able to have surgery to align my bones and fix them in place with hardware. And that I’d then spend more weeks with my foot above my heart, scared out of mind that I’d get a blood clot…and watching my leg muscles shrink before my eyes.

The agony was extraordinary. I discovered that human beings are capable of tolerating an excruciating degree of pain for much longer than we think possible. Like the night the nerve block wore off and for FIVE HOURS I felt like my leg from the knee down was simultaneously bathed in molten lava and mauled by a bear. Tears trickled down my face and I gasped for breath and just sobbed. But there was nothing to be done. That was simply the level of pain that remained after the opioids, the Celebrex, and the Tylenol.

It wasn’t just physical agony either. There was debilitating and overwhelming mental and emotional trauma too. I had daily (sometimes multiple times a day) panic attacks. I even went to the ER once, convinced I was dying. I felt enormously vulnerable and needy (very uncomfortable sensations for me as a man), utterly dependent on my family (Nicole and our little kids) for food and water and love and attention for those first few weeks. All I could do for myself was an occasional excruciating trip to the bathroom—every trip felt like my ankle was going to explode in a shower of blood, as if every ounce of blood in my body was trying to cram itself into my ankle and foot all at once.

The Worst Combination: Bored, Miserable, Vulnerable

I missed EVERYTHING. When all I could do was watch Netflix, read, or play video games those were the last things I wanted to do. I fantasized about doing dishes, folding laundry, mopping.

The weirdest thing was that in that tsunami of anxiety, depression, panic, and pain I couldn’t imagine it EVER being different. It was endless hell as far as I was concerned. That was how it felt, subjectively, no matter how often anyone reminded me about the typical recovery milestones: being able to start putting weight on it 6 weeks after surgery, usually back to some degree of walking by 12 weeks… it still felt like a fantasy. It WAS a fantasy when you’re in a really uncomfortable half-sitting, half-laying position on the couch with your foot at chest height and you’ve been that way for weeks.

What kept me going was the thought that no matter how shitty any day is, ANY DAY is still better than none at all. I was determined to not let it beat me.

I suppose, in a small way, I patted myself on the back and celebrated each day that I got from dawn to dusk. I focused on, and celebrated, each tiny TINY accomplishment or improvement.

The night I was able to FINALLY return to sleeping on my stomach, after sleeping on my back for weeks with my foot elevated above my heart (BTW this SUPER SUCKS) was freakin’ HEAVEN.

It was a very very VERY dark and trying time (to put it mildly) for all of us. Nicole did an amazing job keeping everything from imploding, but we both discovered just what our life would look like with one of us being a complete and total invalid (or MIA) and it SUPER sucked.

Those were probably the longest 3 months of our lives. And it wasn’t instantly better after that either. It probably took 5 months before we regained some sense of normalcy.

But of everything that made that time brutally hard (oh I forgot how I’d have a panic attack every time I drove anywhere for months), the worst was being incapable of seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, of imagining and believing that things would get back to normal.

Thankfully, I had help. While I struggled to imagine ever being “back to normal,” I was able to rely on others. Virtually 24/7 I listened to Youtube affirmation and self-hypnosis videos. I journaled and did my level best to imagine being “better.” I knew that the most important contributions I could make towards the recovery effort were A) giving my body the time to do what it’s amazing at (healing), and B) supporting it with lots of sleep and good nutrition. I did both, and thankfully time, dragging my way from one day to the next, did the rest.

And even though it was hard to imagine in the moment ever being “normal” again, thankfully, now, nearly two years after that horrific accident (on August 28th, 2021), I can walk, run, jump. My ankle rarely hurts, and life is—dare I say—normal again. I’m even grateful for the catalyst that experience was for me. While I had to go through hell to experience the transformation, it has been worth it.

To Achieve It You’ve Got to Believe It

Ever since that time, I’ve realized that we humans have an extraordinarily difficult time imagining and believing in our ability to CHANGE, to IMPROVE, to ACHIEVE. And I’ve thought a lot about why this might be.

The best answer I’ve got is that we look around us and we see consistent and stable patterns in the world and environment around us. The sun rises and sets, the seasons turn, waves roll in and out, etc… So much of our experience of life does, in fact, seem pretty set. Pretty constant.

It seems our brains make the error of extrapolating from these patterns that our lives, WE, are as fixed as sunrise and sunset. Clearly, they are not, we are not.

The problem is that if we can’t IMAGINE a different future for ourselves then how can we hope to ACHIEVE it? Because creating a new future for ourselves, with intention, can require a great deal of effort, persistence, determination, and sacrifice. When the choice might (some days, anyway) be between spending the day binge watching the latest hotness on Netflix or getting dressed, brushing our teeth (some days this is the ultimate achievement!), and venturing out into the HOT sun and heat to ride… you need imagination and BELIEF in your dreams to get off the couch and be uncomfortable in the pursuit of your goals.

Sadly, there are folks who don’t survive their recovery from injuries because they can’t handle the grueling gauntlet, they can’t imagine it will ever be like it was before. They can’t imagine that there WILL come a time when both the physical and emotional pain will abate and you’ll be back on your feet doing the things you love. Sometimes this need to imagine and believe can literally be life and death.

To me this adds another dimension to the whole fixed vs. growth mindset concept. Because I suspect when a lot of folks think of a “growth mindset” what they’re really thinking of is being adaptable (credit to Nicole for pointing this out). They’re conflating the two: Oh, when tough stuff happens or obstacles arise, I can pivot, find a way around.

That’s GREAT, of course. But it’s not enough, and it’s not a growth mindset. A true growth mindset says “I can’t do that YET, but I’m getting better every day.”

But even more than that, for a growth mindset to WORK, we have to couple the encouraging words we say to ourselves, with practice envisioning in rich sensory detail the futures, dreams, and goals we aspire to achieve…as if they have ALREADY been achieved.

Upgrading Your Growth Mindset

This is a big reason why visualization is such a big component of our practice of mental performance for equestrians: it not only nurtures and channels your natural adaptability into developing your growth mindset, but it gives your germinating growth mindset what it needs to build bridges for you to cross to your dreams.

So how can you start building these bridges to your dreams for your growing growth mindset to drive you across?

I’d recommend a small, imminently doable, daily practice of A) adding one brick to the bridge you’re building (metaphorically), and B) spending just five minutes journaling in as much detail, incorporating as many senses as you can, about the future in which you’ve achieved ONE specific goal.

Make it as REAL as you can in your mind, by writing it down (or typing it into your phone or computer). To add a brick to your bridge just means to notice (and appreciate) ONE thing you’re doing EACH day to step towards your dream or goal. It doesn’t need to be anything grandiose. Most of the time our steps towards our dreams are unremarkable.

Consider: nobody celebrates any one single step a mountaineer takes when they climb K2, they celebrate the climb as a whole, once it’s completed. Which is why it’s up to YOU to celebrate each step you take, recognizing that one unremarkable step after another will inevitably take you to your goal.

Now, the question is: what challenges have you struggled with? Did you, like me, experience them as feeling like they would last forever? How did you endure?

Write back! We read every response!

Until next time…

Adiós, mi compadres!

Abe