Brain injury can impact your life in way that you never expected, and afterwards it’s common to feel that life has let you down a bit. You can’t just do the things that used to do without giving them a second thought. You may feel as though you’re not the person that used to be anymore, or that life just seems damn right hard.
Now, it’s completely normal to feel this way, but sadly, the more you allow negative thoughts like this into your mind, the more disruptive they will be. This can damage your recovery process.
The thing is, you don’t stop living because bad things happen. You keep going. We believe that creating a growth mindset will help you develop a more positive outlook on life, so what is it?
Fixed and Growth Mindsets
How you approach the challenges you face, and the language you use when thinking about those challenges, will determine how well you’re going to get through them. If you say things like…
- I can’t / won’t do that.
- This is who I am.
- I can’t change.
you have a fixed mindset. If you believe in these negative thoughts, you will never be able to change! You need to adopt a positive language set to replace the negative language you may be experiencing.
By shifting the way you think about things, you can develop a growth mindset. This can help you feel more fulfilled, motivated and hopeful about life going forward. People with a growth mindset use language like this when they’re faced with a challenge:
- I think I’ll be able to learn that.
- It may take time/effort, but I want to do that.
- I can do that.
A good idea is to write down the language you’re currently using and look at how you can replace the negative with a positive. Keep practising this because the more positive language you use, the greater your self-belief will become! As you begin to believe that you can achieve your dreams and goals in life, you will naturally become a more positive person.
When I first had my accident, within the first few weeks I was told to avoid contact sports. At the time I was running a fans football team as part of Northampton Town Football Club. It was a friendly environment and I absolutely loved it, but all of a sudden that was taken away from me. I took a step back from football and thought about what I could do instead. I’m a runner, so one of the first questions I asked was I able to still run? The answer was yes, so instead of focusing on the fact I couldn’t play football I put all my energy into running and thought about what I could do instead. I missed it like mad at first, but my mindset had to change quickly. This was amazing for my mental health! ~ Mark
How To Challenge Limiting Beliefs
One technique to help you overcome limiting beliefs is to put them on trial. First of all, rate your belief by giving it a score out of 10. 1 being that you hardly believe it and 10 if you think that it’s the absolute truth. Then spend some time looking for hard, actual facts that will confirm to you that it’s 100% true and write them down. Next challenge the evidence that can tell you the belief isn’t totally true, write that down too. When you’ve completed this look at both arguments and compare what you’ve found.
It's important to go into this exercise with an open mind – be realistic and think rationally. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when analysing the evidence.
- Are you considering all of the information or focusing on the negatives?
- Is it possible that you’re jumping to conclusions?
- Could things be better than they seem?
- What’s the worst that could happen? How likely is it to happen?
- Even if the worst did happen, would the outcome be as bad as you think?
- What could you do to handle it?
- Can you see this from a different perspective? How might someone else handle this?
Finally rate the belief again. You may be surprised, but more often than not, you will be able to see that the limiting belief you are holding on to, may not be true. Many of the fears we have are not based on real evidence, they’re based on our own assumptions or negative feelings about a situation. Putting them on trial can help to put them into perspective. Writing down your verdict is also a good idea. If you catch yourself feeling the same way, you can always come back and reflect on this process again.
Developing a Growth Mindset
The brain has an amazing ability to change and adapt over the course of our lives through the things we experience, it’s called Neuroplasticity. It’s an ongoing process that helps you to learn new things and recover from brain injury.
Certain parts of the brain are associated with specific functions. If you have a brain injury, some of these can be damaged and you can forget things you’ve learnt before or become unable to do certain things. When these challenges appear, it can be easy to engage with limiting beliefs and get suck in fixed mindset.
“If they’re able to do that why can’t I… I miss the old me… brain injury has got in my way…”
It might not be possible to get back to exactly the way things were before, but constantly challenging ourselves and focusing on self-care (read our self-care secrets here) can help to improve brain plasticity.
When you combine this with a growth mindset, you’ll be able to work towards new goals. It’s about believing that you can grow and change and become the person you want to be.
Brain injury affects people in different ways, and everyone is on their own journey. To avoid disappointment, you need to be optimistic, yet realistic. Try not to compare yourself to others and focus on what you can do instead of what you can’t. Start by breaking your goals into bitesize chunks. If you want to learn something new, think of 2-3 little things you can do each day to practice, instead of trying to understand the whole thing at once. Remember – little wins add up overtime!