Adjusting

The last five weeks have been a series of adjustments for me. With a broken hand it is quite difficult to do many things. It would be quite easy for me to give up on a lot of things. My passions in life are playing my guitar, sports, and hanging out with friends. Those three things often require two hands. I have had to completely drop the idea of playing my guitar during the healing process. However, sometimes to my detriment, I have not stopped doing anything else. I still play basketball, football, and whatever i get invited to do. I haven't been able to compete at exactly the same level as normal, but close.

What has this taught me? Several things actually. The first is that anything is possible when the right adjustments are made. It took many small and major changes, as well as trial and error to perfect some of the things I kept doing. For example, I started off tying my tie laying down, which took forever but made it possible. Then I taught myself how to stand up and tie it with one hand and it doesn't take that much extra time at all.

Other trial and error moments were with sports. At first when I played basketball I found that the ball would continually fly out of my hand at undesirable moments. However with a little practice and refinement I was able to bring the ball up and shoot precisely adding only a fraction of a second to my shot attempt. And in football it took half the game and realizing that my elbow was a good thing to use, but I was able to make several key catches.

Another thing that I have learned is that attitude is key. If I didn't have a positive, can do anything attitude, I would have accomplish far less and been quite miserable. Instead I was happy, even when failing to do things that I wished I could do. However the more I joked around about how goofy I looked doing things, or about how crazy hard it was to try something, or realizing that I had agreed to do something before I remembered the injury, the better the outcome always was.

Finally, expectations of self are almost always going to be self fulfilling prophecies. If I felt I couldn't do something, then it would never happen. If I had an idea that I could accomplish something I would set my mind to it and continue trying until I accomplished the task at hand.

So what do I take from this experience? That there is probably a lot that I could be doing better at if I had the same attitude and dedication in regular living. I should be an amazing force for a little while after the hand heals. These are keys of success in life, not just for times of injury.