Coping and Recovering: Following an Accident

At the moment you thought you had your life together; you're succeeding in your career, you’ve just started dating someone great and you’re planning to take a step-up on the property ladder. Then everything is brought to a halt, an accidental injury occurs. It could be whiplash, a sprained ankle, or fatal injuries imminently rendering the next few months of your life turned upside down. Incapable of picking up your life where you left off, opposed to drowning yourself in sorrow and frustration, let the tough times develop you. Once you have mentally accepted the event, there are things you can do to cope and recover, to build a better stronger you during after your injury.

Change Focus

Your mind and/or body are most likely incapable of completing your routine basic and complex tasks, such as; getting ready in the speed of light, power walking to work, handling meeting after meeting with ease, speed and efficiency. This is when it’s time to refocus your energy on you, which means taking time to rest (a lot), slow down, live purposefully, feed your body nutrients and fluid you've been lacking in your busy lifestyle and adopting a relaxed approach to living. The truth is, without your able body and mind, you will no longer be able to do the things you used to unless you take a step back to let yourself heal. You never know, after some refocusing you may choose to give up your old life altogether, and accept a slower way of life dedicated to your health and wellbeing opposed to clocking in overtime at your corporate job.

Ask For Help

Now’s not the time to be prideful, you need your family and friends so don’t be ashamed to ask for and accept help. Think of it as if your mom or best friend had gone through the same thing you are, you would want to help get them back on their feet. Besides, love, support, and company from your loved ones, you will also need experts. Whether hiring a specialist, therapist or physiotherapist, there are an abundance of professionals who can advise you how to recover from your injury and psychological trauma, advise what medication you need, and what stretches and exercises to do in focus of keeping your body flexible and moving.

Above all, providing you can’t work for a short or long period of time, you will likely be missing money that enables you to keep a roof over your head and food in your stomach. Contacting an attorney is in your interests if an injury caused is as a result of an accident that wasn’t your fault. Professional legal advice from an attorney will establish whether you might be liable for compensation, this money will hopefully fill your bank enough to take care of you’re out of work. Bare in mind to choose an attorney that has experience in similar cases to your own. For instance, contact a motorcycle accident lawyer for motorbike incidents, a work-related injury lawyer for an accident that happened at work and so forth.

Following an accident, it’s essential to take a step back and refocus all of your energy on taking care of you, furthermore accepting help from family and the experts who can support or advise you through a difficult time. Together these elements will help you both cope and recover following an accident.

How To Let Tough Times Develop You, Not Destroy You

I wrote this post for those of us who've had every good intention to start 2018 off on the right foot.  Yet for each of our own personal reasons, we just seem to be struggling through life's curve-balls and challenges.  So my blog post this week starts with a simple realization, then follows with some call-to-actions.  And by the end, I hope you've found a new way to look at these challenges in your life that you might not have thought of before.

First, Realize This: It's Your Round 1.

When we face a challenge, we usually consider it a challenge because, well, we’ve never BEEN through it before.  We’re not sure what to do. 

If this was our Round 2, we’d be working through it with a little more ease, right?  This is an important concept for us to realize at the start of any hardship.  So let's cut ourselves some slack and accept that this is tough, and we therefore may not be our best selves right now.   

Next, Grieve.  Hard. 

Don’t try to one-up your hardship at the very beginning.  If your situation hurts in any sort of way, allow yourself to feel it.  Do what you need to do to truly feel the pain and grieve yourself through it.  This is a good thing. 

Why?  Because you VALUE that part of your life.  Life and all its happenings actually MEAN something to you.  

But When Is It Time For Me To “Get Over it” and “Move On?”

I personally believe you should never “get over” the loss of a loved one, a pet, a relationship, a job, or anything else personal that made up a huge part of your life.  Rather, you can learn to live with their memory in a new way.  Or, if you’re simply upset about something at work, school, home, or wherever, then remember what I said above.  At then end of the day we should let these difficult times develop us, not destroy us.

Ok, How?

If you find yourself in a continuous pattern of sulk where you feel like it’s destroying you or parts of your life, try this.  Zoom out and look at your situation from above.  Like a bird watching over you. 

Really try to understand the entire picture at hand, and how this current hardship plays into your potential 80+ years of life on this earth.  This will allow you to visualize from the entire perspective of your past, present, and future.  Not just from the perspective as you see things right now. 

Find your highs.  Your happy moments.  Your accomplishments.  Grab ahold of them to help you walk forward each day.

Find your lows.  What you perceive as weaknesses.  And while you’re zoomed out on your life at a bird’s eye view, the important thing to notice is this.  These are NOT in fact low points of your life, they’re LEARNING points. 

Because as each hour and day passes, you’re actually gaining something.  You’re gaining experience, strength, and a deeper appreciation for the things that mean so much to you.     

So take your challenges into the New Year as a person of strength.  Because as each day passes, you continue to learn how to live through them.  So that at the end of the day, we let the hardships we face develop us, not destroy us.

Make it a great 2018,

-Kristin